When I first heard the dingoes howling at dawn, I thought it was the birds. Curlews wail like hurt toddlers and blue-winged kookaburras like barking puppies. I was in the middle of a dream. My mother was going to “open for Elton John” in London. I asked her whether she would sing or play an instrument. She was frustrated. I’m just opening for him, Rebecca. Why can’t you understand that?
Each howl was a musical triplet, with identical first and third notes and the second note at a higher pitch. Joined together, it sounded like you were holding one note but got surprised in the middle of it.
Even though I was in a cabin in a remote part of Australia’s Northern Territory, it didn’t occur to me that the sound could be dingoes. In Perth, the morning chorus is composed and performed by feathered creatures, specifically ravens, corellas, magpies, and laughing kookaburras. So that morning in the cabin, I lay in bed trying to memorize this new call, envious of my husband who is a sound sleeper.
“Did you hear the dingoes this morning?” Bridget the Bush Guide asked us at breakfast. My children and husband shook their heads and continued eating their eggs and bacon.
“Those were dingoes?” I asked her. “Did they sound like this?” And then I did my best howl impression. She nodded politely. “There’s a pack that lives around here. Occasionally they wander through camp.” She saw the look on my face and smiled, “Nothing to worry about.”
We spent the day on a boat in a billabong, which had me humming Waltzing Matilda instead of the dingo howl. With our guide, we discussed possible American names for billabong including estuary, lagoon, and marsh, and finally settled on bayou. Several days from now, with internet access, I would learn about oxbow lakes, but on this day, before verification replaced wonder, a billabong was a bayou.
We cast our rods, not too far from a crocodile that was also fishing. We cheered and took photos of our nine-year-old with her shimmery silver barramundi before throwing it back.
That night, after changing and brushing my teeth in the dark in an attempt to deter the Extraordinary Nocturnal Insect Parade, I wasn’t thinking about dingoes. I was thinking about the bruise on my thigh. Did I bang it against a rock? Finally I recalled earlier that day, I sat under a waterfall for a long time, letting the cool water pound my head, shoulders, and obviously the top of my thigh. I joked with my husband that waterfall pummeling should be a spa treatment, and then I fell asleep.
I have never been grabbed and mercilessly tickled by clowns, but I imagine the sensation is similar to being awoken by two dingoes howling in front of your children’s cabin in the middle of the night.
My husband did not sleep through this. He shot up from bed to the screen window and said the three words you never want to hear in the middle of the night, “Something’s out there.”
I recognized the howl. “It’s a dingo.” I said, sitting up in bed, hugging my knees to my chest.
“No it’s not. It’s wallabies or something.”
“It’s not wallabies. It’s two fucking dingoes.” I sprung up from bed and squinted at the screen. I didn’t know where my glasses were, probably somewhere near my toothbrush. “Why are they pacing? What are they fucking doing?”
“I wonder if the girls are awake,” he said calmly. Oh my god, we have children. “Don’t worry, it’s not dingoes,” he said.
My brain assembled the following narrative: My husband did not believe there were dingoes outside our children’s cabin because that’s terrifying and we are on vacation and if we all just agree that the awful howling and creepy footsteps is nothing more than an adorable wallaby family going out for a midnight hop then we can go back to sleep.
I did not say any of this to him.
I tried to calm down. I knew that with the exception of one naughty dingo who ate a nine-week-old baby in 1980, inspiring a Meryl Streep movie, dingoes are shy around humans. It is more dangerous to have a German Shepherd living in your neighborhood than it is to camp with dingoes (I made that up.).
“It’s not dingoes,” he repeated. The howling persisted. I heard one of our children make a sound. They won’t remember this in the morning, I told myself, which is in fact accurate.
“It’s definitely dingoes,” I insisted, my jaw clenching.
Next, let me be clear. I did not try and find something heavy to throw at the dingoes, nor did I run next door to my children whom I love with all my heart.
I got out my phone to record the sound of the howling. My plan was to play the recording for the guide and prove to my husband that the sound was in fact dingoes. My need to be right is an embarrassment.
It is also heroic. The light from the phone screen caused the dingoes to run away.
We returned to bed. I told my husband I loved him. Then he told me he loved me and whispered, “It wasn’t dingoes.”
The next morning I told the guide about the dingoes. I also told the girls who were remarkably unfazed. An hour later, my husband found the head of a bird outside the kids’ cabin. Wallabies are herbivores.
